I was seventeen years when I lost
my country and my girlish single
braid. They were completely new
days, the air above the brutalized
city was naturally trapped, dead silver
flecked with a germ-soaked beauty.
The sky under a rainbow
is lighter than the sky above it,
the way light is bent inside raindrops.
The sky between a double rainbow
is darker, the dark band
is caused by sunlight bent upwards,
a bright blue rag colour for dyeing
yarn, for glaze over silver, letters
in blue. Variations in the colour
of the sea, and longer into spring
than seemed bearable, the sky slowly
sipped away to willow ashes.
It seemed to have, I would like to say,
hands, though they were not seen,
those breathless ghosts of mine.
All cherries had taken their farewell
of their perfect cherry colour.
I could feel everyone praying for me
like a little forest bird,
the otherest. My light shone
on frost-shadows, rose-pink
on the hand, like down, such
as that of the vulture. A thick layer
of fragrances comforts the brain
and memory. I was being
distilled or simplified, like
a westernizing eye-shape. Our only
tree in more costly storms
fell into my dream’s pale field
as water that will part gold
from silver, or our grace from
lack of it. Winter takes me
deep again to where she was
already root, the death
of my dream of how to paint
wounds, with the art that hushes.